P. T. Barnum, in the early years of his life, had no modern press agent, but it is doubtful if the interesting person could have aided the showman in advertising his enterprises. No one knew better than he the value of printer’s ink, and of the men who made printer’s ink the vehicle of news and information. Old circus men recall an illustration of his unique but impressive way of attracting public attention in 1849, which would have done credit to this enlightened generation. He sent an expedition to Ceylon, a formidable undertaking then, to capture elephants. They returned to New York with ten of the animals, harnessed them in pairs to a chariot and drove up Broadway. Not content with this advertisement, he sent one of the elephants to his Connecticut farm and engaged the beast in agricultural pursuits. A keeper, clad in oriental costume, was the companion. They were stationed on a six-acre lot which lay close beside the tracks of the New York and New Haven railroad. The keeper was furnished with a timetable of the road with special instructions to be busily engaged in plowing, with the animal dragging the implement, whenever passenger trains passed. The proceeding made a sensation and the showman gravely announced that he intended to introduce a herd of elephants to do all his plowing and heavy draft work. After the six acres had been plowed over at least a hundred times, he quietly returned the animal to his museum. It is related in the circus world that the “Feejee Mermaid” was the stepping-stone to Barnum’s road to wealth and circus renown. The thing was made in Japan with an ingenuity and mechanical perfection well calculated to deceive. Barnum bought it in 1842, when he was unknown, modified by printer’s ink the general incredulity as to the possibility of the existence of mermaids, and aroused great curiosity to see and examine his specimen. Then, too, he persuaded some naturalist to endorse it as genuine. The fame of his museum and its preserved curiosity was wafted from one end of the land to the other. Money flowed in rapidly and the notoriety he attained he never permitted to fade.